# Hondsrug College Rooster
Never late, always in the right classroom
---
## How I Hacked Together a Timetable App for My High School
Back when I was in high school, checking your timetable meant digging through a **clunky website**. There were no apps, no push notifications—just a browser and a lot of refreshing. It was slow, annoying, and totally out of step with how often schedules would change.
One day, some friends and I stumbled upon an **internal API** the school was using to fetch timetables. Jackpot. We realized we could use it to build our own app—something fast, simple, and made just for students.
We built for **Android** (with Java). All you had to do was enter your class name, and it would show you everything you needed for the day: what subjects you had, which teacher was teaching them, and where you needed to be. If a class was canceled, it would be **marked in red**, so you didn’t show up to an empty room. Super handy.
Everything was working smoothly... until the school found out.
They started putting **IP rate limits** on the internal API. Since our server was using a **single IP address**, it got throttled hard. But we weren’t ready to give up. So we got a little creative.
We built a **proxy** that routed traffic through the **Tor network**. That way, every request came from a **different IP**, and the school couldn’t block us. The downside? Requests got slower. Tor isn’t exactly blazing fast. So we added **caching** to the mix, making sure we weren’t hitting the API for the same data twice.
It was scrappy, slightly rebellious, and a lot of fun. But most importantly—it worked. Students finally had a timetable app that actually fit their needs, made by people who *got* those needs.
Looking back, that little project taught me a lot: **reverse engineering**, **API design**, **caching strategies**, and... how to stay just one step ahead of a **rate limiter**.